]]>I came across the following question in a coaching group on the subject of picking the team’s starting setter.

How do you rank/rate setters when trying to decide a starter? Seems like a lot of what they do is based on what others do on the court. We have four above average setters, but no great standout, so basing some numbers on who’s the best would be great.

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to speak in terms of picking a single starting setter. The ideas I present, though, apply to picking starters in a multiple setter system (4-2, 6-2, etc.).

Also, I’m assuming we’re talking about a competitive situation where you want to put the best team on the court. The alternative is a more developmental situation where you’re not so concerned about winning and losing. In that case other considerations dominate.

I’m going to exclude from this discussion non-playing aspects. That is stuff like attitude, effort, etc. At least in so much as they are not reflected in on-court performance. For example, you could have a setter who is a better performer than others, but whose attitude is not something you want to reward with playing time.

The first thing I would say is that you want to do all of your evaluations in game play situations. By that I mean I would not consider drill performance, as setters often don’t have to perform the fullness of their positional requirements. You want to evaluate the complete package. There are a lot of things setters have to do. You can’t pick a starter based on only looking at one or two of them.

By the way, when I say “game play” there are levels to it. You will get the best, most comprehensive view of a setter’s abilities in a 6 v 6 situation since that is what they are in come match day. However, you can use small-sided games to good effect as well. You just need to understand the limitations any given game has with respect to the setter position.

Who’s the winner?

I believe it was in Insights that Mike Hebert talked about the different personality roles players can take within a team. I don’t recall all of them, but I remember Winner being one of them. Mike made the observation that high performing teams have setters who are Winners.

In American Football the quarterback is often judged on the basis of winning and losing. The setting position in volleyball has a lot of parallels to quarterback, and as such winning is one of the ways we can evaluate them. A good setter does the things they need to do to help their team win.

With that in mind, one way to help determine the starting setter is to see who wins most often. This was something we did at Midwestern State in the 2017 season. We kept track of the winners of games for all positions, though in our analysis it was most influential on the setter evaluations. We had a senior who started the year before going up against a sophomore who had some physical and other advantages in her favor. It was the senior, though, who won far more often in the games we played the first couple weeks of practice. That strongly favored her for the starting job.

I should note, we had a conversation with the sophomore about things. In it we specifically mentioned the differential in winning. It was something she took to heart, and we noticed a rapid improvement from that point on. So you can not only use these sorts of evaluations to make a starting choice, but also direct the development of the non-starter(s).

Who runs the best offense?

Another good way to evaluate your setters with with offensive statistics. To put it simply, what is the team hitting percentage – or whatever your preferred metric – for each setter? This is obviously a bit more labor intensive to track than wins, but is can provide a number of useful insights. That’s above and beyond simply figuring out which setter puts up the best numbers.

For example, if you track the hitting stats for each setter you can drill down on things. You might find one setter runs the middles better, while the other is stronger when setting the pins. Aside from giving you developmental areas of focus for each, that sort of information could feed into decisions with respect to your opposition. Maybe you play a team that struggles in the middle, so you want to really feature that in your offense when playing them. This could see you favor the setter who is better with the middles even if overall the other setter is stronger.

Along a similar offensive line of thinking, you could also you some kind of set rating system. It’s a concept similar to ones used for serving and passing. I haven’t come across any that are commonly used, because rating a set is quite complex. Here’s one idea, though.

Non-offensive considerations

As noted above, setters have several other things to do aside from running the offense. They have to play defense, serve, block (some at least), and communicate with their teammates on the court in the right way. If they are doing these things well it will probably reflect in how often they win the games you put them in.

Where things get interesting is when you have a situation where a setter is good in the offensive category, but not great in the other areas – or vice versa. In this case it’s possible your own biases could lead you to a decision. For example, I worked with a coach with a strong defensive focus. She always favored the stronger defensive player if there wasn’t some other really strong factor in play. This is why I like looking at winning. It’s pretty objective.

And if you look at offensive and non-offensive factors alongside the winning aspect you can gain a lot of useful insights. On the one hand, you might be able to see why a setter struggles to win. On the other hand, you could see how a winning setter might get even better.

Video analysis

It’s sometimes not practical to collect the kind of stats we’d like in practice. This is particularly true if you coach by yourself. What almost all of us can do, though, is record things on video. That’s gives you a chance to go back and stat things, for one. But even if you can’t do that, you can use the video to see which setter does the things you want to see them doing most often.

Know what’s important

A big factor in all of this is knowing what’s important. There are many things you can look at when evaluating setters. They simply don’t weight equally when it comes to which setter will do the best job for your team, however. Most of us would put running a good offense at or near the top of the list, but what’s next? And what’s after that? Having a tiebreak system is important. You might have some ideas, but make sure they are based on observation and evidence, not just impressions. Different teams and levels of play have different considerations in this regard.

So when comparing setters make sure the games you put them in put the decision factors strongly in focus. And make the situations the setters are in as comparable as possible. It would not be fair to base your starter decision, for example, on stats collected when one setter was playing with a strong team around her and the other had a weak team. You need to balance that out.

]]>https://coachingvb.com/deciding-on-a-starting-setter/feed/019563Some things we want our player doing on the courthttps://coachingvb.com/some-things-we-want-our-player-doing-on-the-court/
https://coachingvb.com/some-things-we-want-our-player-doing-on-the-court/#respondFri, 10 Aug 2018 13:00:25 +0000https://coachingvb.com/?p=19547A group of top coaches offer up a list of 10 things player should do on the court. I have issues with a couple of them. What about you?

]]>There’s an article on the USA Volleyball website that shares “10 Things You Should Do on the Court” as indicated by some top coaches. The coaches contributing the 10 include the likes of Russ Rose, Hugh McCutcheon, and John Speraw. Here are the bullets.

Outside hitters: Focus on the first contact before thinking about the third contact.

Be disciplined with your block and avoid reaching out for the ball or drifting.

Set attackers who are asking for the ball.

When attacking, adjust your approach to the set.

Serve it in after 20, after timeouts, and when your opponent or teammate has just missed.

In beach, keep talking to your partner.

Setters: Take tight passes and keep your hitters off the net.

Understand that you’re always involved in the play.

Setters: Error high rather than low when setting the middle attacker.

Be ready to play.

Go to the article to see what the coaches say about each point. Meanwhile, I’ll share a few thoughts of my own. I think a couple deserve specific comment.

For #3, while I understand the idea, I think our coaching objective is #8. We want our players always ready for the next phase of play. Ask players from my teams and they will tell you that I harp on the idea of “What’s your job right now?” If a player is one of the attacking options they should be ready. Asking for the ball shouldn’t be necessary. That said, I do understand the value of it from the perspective of inexperienced players.

With respect to #5, I am definitely a coach who thinks in terms of momentum with respect to serving.To that end, I don’t like seeing missed serves in a row. I do understand, though, that at times you have to stay aggressive. That’s why I’m a little hesitant about saying no misses after 20. I do know some top coaches have this philosophy. Mike Lingenfelter talked about something along these lines in the Volleyball Coaching Wizards – Wizard Wisdom book.

I think #6 doesn’t just apply to beach. Indoor players should communicate constantly as well. This isn’t even mainly about calling the ball, though. There’s a lot more to the game than that.

I definitely agree with #9. Setters have a major tendency to under-set their middles.

What do you think about this list? Are these things you try to teach your players? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

]]>https://coachingvb.com/some-things-we-want-our-player-doing-on-the-court/feed/019547Your idea of professional may not fit with realityhttps://coachingvb.com/your-idea-of-professional-may-not-fit-with-reality/
https://coachingvb.com/your-idea-of-professional-may-not-fit-with-reality/#respondWed, 08 Aug 2018 13:00:30 +0000https://coachingvb.com/?p=19518It's very easy to react to things without really understanding the context of the situation. Here's and example of how that can happen.

Hey coaches, I am coaching my first professional team here in Denmark. So be ready for questions and tactic strategies.

What’s your reaction to that?

Was it something along the lines of, “You’re going to coach a professional team! Shouldn’t you already know about tactics and stuff?”

I should note that top level volleyball in Denmark is really what you’d call semi-professional. By that I mean you don’t have a full team of players who make their primary living from playing volleyball. There might be a few who do, but there are for sure others who really don’t make much at all. Some could be students who play on the side.

It’s similar to the situation I was in when coaching at Svedala. My team had three full-time pros. All the rest either had regular jobs or were in school. I actually coached against a number of Danish teams while I was in Sweden.

Additionally, I believe this new coach is actually in a player/coach situation. That means they haven’t been a dedicated coach before, seemingly. It’s something you sometimes see in volleyball – and other sports. When I coached at Brown, one of the other assistants was a former USA National Team player who played pro ball in Italy. For part of that time she was player/coach. Jefferson Williams, who’s interview is in the first Volleyball Coaching Wizards book, also was a long-time player/coach.

My point in all this is it’s a bit unfair to jump on the coach quoted above because we don’t really understand what “professional” means in their context. It certainly doesn’t mean what most Americans would think of as professional. And it’s not the same context as what it’d be in a strong volleyball country like Italy or Russia.

]]>https://coachingvb.com/your-idea-of-professional-may-not-fit-with-reality/feed/019518The cultural risks in taking over a new program latehttps://coachingvb.com/the-cultural-risks-in-taking-over-a-new-program-late/
https://coachingvb.com/the-cultural-risks-in-taking-over-a-new-program-late/#respondMon, 06 Aug 2018 13:00:20 +0000https://coachingvb.com/?p=19511If you take over a new team close to the start of the season you have to make sure you do the right work on team culture or risk long term repercussions.

]]>An article on LinkedIn talks about what the author describes as “Second Year Syndrome”. It’s got a clear objective to get consulting business, but nevertheless brings up interesting points. Specifically, it looks at something that can happen when a new coaching staff takes over a team right before the season. The focus is on when the prior staff is fired. I think, though, there are parallels for a voluntary departure.

The reason the author focuses on the “fired” situation is culture. Here’s what she says.

“When a coach is hired close to the start of their season they do not have the time they need to develop the relationships necessary to accurately assess the team culture.”

This is certainly true. I’ve been in this situation a couple of times. Not following a fired head coach, but nevertheless taking over a team with no clear sense of the culture. That’s how it was my first year at Exeter. The same was true at Svedala.

The first season

I previously shared some thoughts on working with a new team from a session of the 2013 AVCA Convention. Culture did not specifically come up by name, but developing trust was. I think, whatever the situation, that’s key. No matter the culture you take over (and the assumption is when following a fired staff that it’s bad), trust is critical.

The challenge when taking over a team late like that is you tend to have a lot on your plate. You’re trying to learn all the in’s and out’s of the new program. You’re trying to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your team. Chances are you don’t have a lot of time before competitive matches start, so you’ve got that to worry about as well. It’s very easy to forget the culture stuff. The article points out that this cannot be the case.

Here’s the thing, though. As the culture chapter from Volleyball Coaching Wizards – Wizard Wisdom indicates, culture is in everything you do. That includes what you do on the court in practice. It’s all about having the proper awareness of the work you do.

Heading into the second year

The idea in the article of the “Second Year Syndrome” concept is what happens if you don’t get a good handle on the team culture in the first year. Basically, the author believes the opportunity might be gone. She says outside help is probably the only way out in that case. But then she’s a coaching consultant, so of course she says that.

Will some outside help work? It might. Problem is actually getting it. Not always easy to find someone with the availability to spend the time and the observational skills to provide meaningful insights.

So what if you don’t have an outside perspective?

Not much choice. You just have to do the work. Keep getting to know the players and developing trust. Get rid of the players who won’t go along with the new program. Continue ingraining the culture you want in everything you do. Read the chapter from the Wizards book I mentioned above. It will for sure give you something to think about.

]]>https://coachingvb.com/the-cultural-risks-in-taking-over-a-new-program-late/feed/019511Master one defense, or develop familiarity with multiplehttps://coachingvb.com/master-one-defense-or-develop-familiarity-with-multiple/
https://coachingvb.com/master-one-defense-or-develop-familiarity-with-multiple/#respondFri, 03 Aug 2018 13:00:35 +0000https://coachingvb.com/?p=19492Is it best to get great at one defensive system or to develop the ability to play multiple systems? I argue doing the first is basically doing the second.

What do you think is better when it comes to defense: running one defense and becoming great at, almost perfecting the one defense or running two or three defenses to be able to adjust to opponent tendencies but you’re never really perfecting one?

I get the idea behind this question, but I think it has built in some limited thinking.

Let me start by saying it is often beneficial to have defensive flexibility – at least when you get toward higher levels of play. You want to be able to adapt to the capabilities and tendencies of the opposition. To my mind, though, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to think in terms of multiple defensive systems.

I’ll explain.

One system, multiple adjustments

First, we absolutely want to start with the defensive system which is optimal for the majority of what we face. Call it “perimeter” or “rotational” or “middle up” or whatever. It’s the thing we have to spend most of our time developing and refining.

Here’s the important thing, though, to my mind. There is a strong tendency in coaches to teach defensive systems, meaning positioning, in a robotic fashion. They tell players where they should stand. I had a player when I coached in Sweden who HATED when players asked where they should stand on defense, and I agree. What coaches should be giving players is their areas of responsibility.

You might be thinking that’s the same thing, but it’s not. This is where reading comes in to play. Defenders can’t just go to a spot and hope the ball is hit right to them. To truly have an effective defense, each player must be able to use their on-going analysis of the developing play to determine the most likely sort of attack they will see within their area of responsibility. At the same time, players must have a strong understanding of seam responsibility and how it changes as they shift relative positions on the court.

Developing this reading ability and seam awareness actually means the players can essentially play different types of defenses without formalizing movement patterns. For example, a middle back who reads well can play a standard perimeter defense type of position (deep in 6), they could play more middle-middle (usually about 3m in from the end line), or they could even play off the back of the court depending on their read of the block, set location, hitter approach, etc.

Here’s another example. In many perimeter systems the defender in 1 releases up if they read tip. In essence, they are doing what they would do in a rotational defense where they’d move up behind the block. Often in this case the middle back person is told to cover the deep line when the right back moves up for tip defense. That means you have them playing a defacto rotational system.

My point in all this is that as coaches we don’t necessarily need to thinking of defensive flexibility as the ability to run multiple defined system. We can, instead, think of just one system with adjustments. It simplifies things for the players too.

Multiple systems

Now, there might be times when you want to run an entirely different system. My guess is this will be very infrequent, though. For example, when I coached at Brown our main defense was perimeter. Against Yale, though, we played a kind of rotational defense. The only time we ever worked on the rotational defense was before playing Yale. Other than that, we only trained perimeter.

How can you get away with that? Simple. If reading and seam responsibility are well developed, then shifting defensive responsibilities is not that difficult. The hardest part of it all is making sure the players remember which system they’re playing. That’s going to happen no matter how many different ones you train.

]]>https://coachingvb.com/master-one-defense-or-develop-familiarity-with-multiple/feed/019492Service errors vs. service pointshttps://coachingvb.com/service-errors-vs-service-points/
https://coachingvb.com/service-errors-vs-service-points/#respondWed, 01 Aug 2018 14:18:22 +0000https://coachingvb.com/?p=19479There is a point at which service aggression is just right to achieve the highest point scoring (breakpoint) percentage, but it varies.

]]>I previous wrote the post Looking at Serving Risk and Reward. In it I broke down the risk/reward prospects of serving aggressively by way of a formula. Mark Lebedew and his research partner Ben Raymond posted an analysis of 2018 Volleyball Nations League serving. It basically takes that idea and applies it to real world statistics. There are a number of different graphs which are worth looking at showing the trade-off between service errors and point scoring % (referred to as breakpoint %).

For the most part, when you look at the graphs you see a line with a hump. Point scoring percentages are lower when service errors are lowest. They then rise as errors increase, but only up to a certain point. After that the extra errors negatively impact point scoring. In other words, there’s a kind of sweat spot where the risk and reward of serving aggressiveness balance to give the best point scoring percentage.

I can speak to this idea from personal experience. One season when I coached at Brown there was a point when I noticed our serving effectiveness had dropped off. In my analysis I realized we were only on 1-2 errors per set. We were at our best when it was 3-4, so I encouraged our servers to get more aggressive.

Here’s a basic example from the report.

In the report you’ll see different curve samples based on match data. In fact, no two teams had the same result. For example, the USA graph shows they were best with a notably higher error rate than we see for any of the other teams – at least for that particular match.

It’s worth noting that in one case there was no hump in the plot. That was from when France played Korea. The line for France in that match was entirely downward sloping from left to right. That means added service aggression was actually counterproductive. They were better off just keeping the ball in play.

]]>https://coachingvb.com/service-errors-vs-service-points/feed/019479Anja’s storyhttps://coachingvb.com/anjas-story/
https://coachingvb.com/anjas-story/#respondMon, 30 Jul 2018 13:00:22 +0000https://coachingvb.com/?p=19448The story of a player I coached in England helps to highlight the impact we coaches can have on the lives of our players - now and for years to come.

]]>In June 2018 I got a notice from Facebook that it was the 25th birthday of one of the players I coached at Exeter – a young woman named Anja. A Croatian, Anja was one of the approximately two dozen non-English players I coached during my time in England. In 2012-13, my first year there, she was one of the two club co-captains. In 2013-14 she was part of the team that reached the UK university national semifinals in Edinburgh.

Anja was easily the tallest player in the squad. Her jump was practically non-existent, though. It was something of a running joke, in fact. Anja also had a cannon for an arm, and terrified her pepper partners. It wasn’t the power, though. It was the fact that she hit the ball with no spin. You couldn’t be sure quite where it was going. Even really experienced players were scared to pepper with Anja.

My first year at Exeter Anja was our third string middle, and she seemed quite happy with that. I got the impression from the few times she did play that she would have been fine staying on the bench. Despite her size and power, she was inexperienced – and not particularly skilled either.

The Anja who returned for the start of the 2013-14 season was a different player. She’d clearly worked out over the Summer, and was eager for the team to do great things that year. There was still a tentativeness to her play at the beginning, though, and she still had much to learn. As a result, she was one of 3-4 players all competing for the second starting middle spot.

Two decisions made all the difference

Something that really helped Anja that year was a club decision from the prior Spring. The newly elected club captains and I decided to add second teams to both the men’s and women’s side of things. While the first teams competed in Division 1, the second teams would play in Division 2.

Now, I should clarify something about when I say “teams”. You see, we trained everyone together. There was no first-team-only or second-team-only type of practices. We had one squad of I think 14 players that we split as needed for matches.

A second decision from the Spring was to enter the team in the Southwest Regional league. The year before they played in the Exeter city league, but that was co-ed on a men’s net and low quality play. It was a joke in terms of helping the players get better. In the Southwest league we got I think 14 matches on a proper women’s net. The opposition was of mixed quality, but it was good experience.

Those Division 2 and Regional matches were massive for the team overall, and certain player specifically. Instead of a select few getting the vast majority of the playing time, the whole squad got to play quite a bit.

Impact on Anja

Playing time is usually not a switch that makes a player better. They generally have to cycle between training and playing for the lessons to get learned and for them to reach a kind of tipping point in their development.

During the first half of our season in 2013-14, despite the playing time, Anja made all the mistakes you’d expect of an inexperienced middle. She took balls that weren’t hers and let other go that were. Her movements sometimes caused problems on the court. I remember her teammates’ frustration with her during the Student Cup qualification tournament in November. At that time Anja was probably the #5 middle in the rankings.

Up to that point, Anja had played in several matches as a starter – mainly in the Regional league. While her skill development still left a lot to be desired, one critical element had changed. Anja was now a confident player on the court. Gone was the young woman who played only reluctantly the year before. This made a massive difference in her development. It gave her much needed focus.

Anja becomes a starter

At the end of the first term the team held its annual holiday dinner. During the event there were some awards. One of those was Most Improved.

No. That didn’t go to Anja. It went to one of the players new to the team who, like Anja, was a major beneficiary of the added competition and playing time. She was very inexperienced and made really big gains. If I remember correctly, though, when we held the year-end banquet in March it was Anja who got the award.

I can’t remember at this point when Anja finally took hold of the second Middle starting spot for good. I do know she had it totally locked in before we went to Edinburgh for Final 8s in March. Between the Student Cup in November and then Anja got to play a bunch more matches. She smoothed out those rough patches that caused problems and became a very consistent performer. She wasn’t a star, but you knew what you were going to get.

The cherry on top

And to top Anja’s season off, we did the completely unexpected. The Exeter Women reached the national semifinal. Honestly, our goal was really just to put in a respectable performance at Final 8s, since it was the first time in anyone’s memory that the women’s team had gone that far (if ever). So when we accomplished what we did it left us all floating on a cloud. And Anja started all four of the matches we played.

She’d gone from near the bottom of the depth charts to starting on a team that accomplished something historic.

Going out on top

Anja graduated from Exeter that year. She went on to do grad school in London. I asked her at the time if she was going to keep playing, but she said she wasn’t. Her feeling was that she couldn’t possibly match the 2013-14 season’s experience. She’d prefer to let that be her final volleyball memory.

When Facebook told me it was Anja’s 25th birthday I sent her a message joking that it was all downhill from there. She replied, “It was all downhill from Edinburgh!”

The moral

It was, of course, a young person saying that. Those of us who’ve got a few more years behind us know there are a lot of significant events in our lives after 25 – even if we do joke that that’s when we peaked.

Still, there’s no doubt that whole experience was a meaningful one for Anja. It’s something she probably will remember for a long time, and I’m willing to bet some of the things she learned along the way will serve her for years to come. This is something we coaches need to be cognizant of in our work.

There’s a good chance you mainly work with young people. That means you are helping to create experiences and facilitate lessons learned that could influence their lives for years to come – positively or negatively. You are helping to shape the person they will be.

Think about that – the trust you’ve been given. Be responsible for it. Make sure you are doing everything you can to further your players’ development in a positive, meaningful fashion.

]]>https://coachingvb.com/anjas-story/feed/019448What do you do the first day of practice?https://coachingvb.com/what-do-you-do-the-first-day-of-practice/
https://coachingvb.com/what-do-you-do-the-first-day-of-practice/#respondFri, 27 Jul 2018 13:00:24 +0000https://coachingvb.com/?p=19436What should you do during your first team practice. It depends on you situation with respect to schedule, team composition, and assessment needs.

]]>Came across the following question from a coach taking over a new team.

First day of practice. What do you do? Start fast and set the tone for practice expectations, go over team rules, paperwork requirements?

Let me take this in pieces.

Don’t waste gym time

Most of us only have a limited amount of court time with our teams, for one reason or another. I would not waste any of that on paperwork, team meetings, or anything that doesn’t involve a volleyball. I even want my warm-ups to be a productive from a volleyball perspective as possible. Do the administrative and other non-volleyball stuff outside of gym time.

Set the tone?

The author of the question above mentions starting fast and setting the tone for expectations. While I do think establishing expectations from the outset is important, that doesn’t have to come from a fast start. In fact, a fast start might not even be advisable. Depends on your situation. To reduce the risk of injury you don’t want players going from little in the way of high intensity work, straight into a heavy load. Better to build into it.

Straight at it or build it up?

Depending on your situation, you could either go right into working on team things the first practice or take a more measured approach. If you have a lot of returners and/or only have a short amount of time before your first match, jumping right in is probably the way you want to go. In that case, you’ll think about running a fairly standard practice based on your key priorities.

If, however, you need to do a bit more in the way of assessment you’ll probably want to take a different approach. Same thing if you are integrating a bunch of new players into the team. This was the approach I took to my first practice session coaching in Sweden. I used that session to get my first real look at the players and to start them getting to know each other as players.

]]>https://coachingvb.com/what-do-you-do-the-first-day-of-practice/feed/019436Coaching team strategy and tactics during a matchhttps://coachingvb.com/coaching-strategy-tactics-during-a-match/
https://coachingvb.com/coaching-strategy-tactics-during-a-match/#respondWed, 25 Jul 2018 13:00:10 +0000https://coachingvb.com/?p=19421There are some reasons why coaches don't talk strategy and tactics with their team during matches, but for their development you should if you can.

Being an avid reader of your publications I would like to hear your thoughts on coaching tactics during the match.

I understand collegiate and professional level coaches use tactics as part of their training and preparing for opponents. Most coaches that coach at the youth level do not seem to use tactics, or very little. I say this because I just spent 9 days of 10 at USAV Girls JrNat Championship and really realized how much coaches coach skills instead of tactics. Coaches seemed to only provide feedback when errors were made and during timeouts. I guess the only ‘tactics’ I did see were where to serve. Top level open coaches for the most part just sat or stood without providing feedback was disappointing.

Tactics vs Strategy

I should first clarify terminology here. Generally speaking, tactics are the things you do to execute a strategy. For example, you might decide you want to attack against the opposing team’s weakest blocker as much as possible. That would be the strategy. The tactics would be the offensive play(s) you run to make that happen.

Let’s say the other team’s setter is their weak blocker. You could run your middle on a quick to try to hold the opposing middle. That would give your outside hitter a 1-on-1 swing against the setter.

Pre-planned vs. On the fly

Strategy and tactics are often determined ahead of time as the result of scouting. When you have access to video or the ability to watch a team before playing them – or have played them before – this is the standard approach.

They can also develop out of something you see during the match, though. An example of this comes from when I coached the Exeter women. My second year we played Cardiff at the end of our league season. They had small setter who was not a realistic blocker. They had an athletic middle next to her. I noticed early on that they were basically having the middle try to block by herself on sets to Position 4. The problem was that usually meant she was late getting there and floating. So I instructed the team to attack there as often as possible when the setter was front row. It was highly effective.

Why not talk strategy and tactics during a match?

The core of the emailer’s question is why coaches – especially club coaches – don’t work more with their players on strategy and tactics during matches. I think there are a couple of possible reasons for this.

The first is taking a strictly developmental mindset. By that I mean they have opted to focus just on technique and player development. This may be a specific choice or the result of inexperience. I think a lot of newer coaches tend to go this route because they haven’t developed the ability to take a wider perspective as yet. That said, there are certainly times and situations where it makes sense to keep things simple and not worry about strategy and tactics.

The second way a coach could look at things is that they are just going to focus on their side of the court. There may be some tactical elements to this, but generally speaking they aren’t thinking about what’s happening with the other team. It’s more about playing the game that is immediately in front of them. In this case the coach is probably focused on things like block and defensive position, executing on offensive plays, and things like that. It can be hard for a solo coach to watch both sides of the net, so oftentimes just watching their own is the way they go.

That said ….

Having provided the reasons why a coach may not give much attention to strategy and tactics in a match, I think failing to incorporate it into the team discussion misses a teaching opportunity. Yes, of course, if you spot a weakness your team can take advantage of (per my Exeter example above), then that’s important as well. This is especially so if you coach in an environment where winning matters. I think there’s more to it, though.

As I’ve written previously, we can’t direct everything our team does. It’s just not possible in our sport. The players have to work things out for themselves on the court much of the time. That’s a skill they need to develop. If you don’t talk strategy and tactics with them you are effectively stunting their growth. Players need to learn how to both analyze the competitive situation and devise solutions to the challenges they face.

This is the sort of thing you work with them on during film, while scouting teams live, in practice, and during matches. It’s all part of raising their volleyball IQ.

]]>https://coachingvb.com/coaching-strategy-tactics-during-a-match/feed/019421Volleyball Coaching Job Search Log – July 23, 2018https://coachingvb.com/volleyball-coaching-job-search-log-july-23-2018/
https://coachingvb.com/volleyball-coaching-job-search-log-july-23-2018/#respondMon, 23 Jul 2018 13:00:21 +0000http://coachingvb.com/?p=18948I've been pursuing different potentially opportunities in the US and abroad as I've become aware of them. At this point, though, nothing has developed.

]]>Even before I found out I was not selected to be the head coach at Midwestern State I had my eye on things and some feelers out – just in case. As a result, I was right into gear in exploring my future options. Of course, at this time of year things are getting pretty thin. The length of the MSU hiring process didn’t do me any favors in that regard.

Not sure if it’s necessarily a good thing, but I took a fairly wide perspective on what I might do next. I could pursue a head coach position somewhere. I could try for an assistant job. With my PhD, a job in academia was on the table. Maybe I could focus more on the business side of things.

Then too, there was the question of location. Do I look overseas again? Or do I stay in the States? There are pluses and minuses to both options.

Head Coach – US

The head job at Division II Lake Erie was open when it came time to start my job search in earnest. I was a little late to it, but I figured it was worth a shot anyway, especially after one of my former men’s players at Exeter said he’d heard good things about it from a friend. The funny thing was the outgoing head coach’s name is Foeman.

I also heard that Chesnut Hill College, also in Division II, had a vacancy. No job posting was up, but I did send me resume to the Athletic Director for possible consideration. I heard a little bit later, though, that the A.D. was on their way out as well, so it seemed like things were in a muddle. Eventually, a posting did go up, but it was listed as a part-time job, so I didn’t apply. I’m not sure how that’s even possible for a D2 head coach job – unless there’s some weird accounting or configuration.

In late June or early July the head job at Maryville posted. That’s also a Division II program, one MSU played in 2017. This is a program that’s been pretty weak in recent years, albeit in one of the strongest conferences in the country. The last couple of coaches have been young and inexperienced. I hesitated to apply because of that, but they have a new A.D. – one who actually has meaningful coaching experience. So on the off chance they’d be willing to change it up and go with someone more experienced, I applied. As of this update, I have had no reply.

In the early-middle part of July Newman posted for a new head coach. Again, we’re talking a Division II program that MSU played in 2017. Newman is actually where the prior MSU coach came from back in 2015. This one is an interesting situation in that they are the only Heartland Conference team not joining the Lone Star Conference in 2019. They instead will join the MIAA. Geographically it makes better sense. I’d heard good things about the A.D., so I applied. As of this update, I’ve had no reply.

Assistant Coach – US

The assistant job at Division I South Florida was posted in mid-May. It struck me as a place where I could really contribute, so I applied. I got the “thanks, but we’re going with someone else” email in June 11th. It was rather amazing to find out the guy they hired had only high school and club experience.

I reached out to a high level Division I coach to see if they needed a volunteer assistant for the coming year. There wasn’t one listed on the roster, and it was a program that’s long interested me. Unfortunately, they were already all set in that position.

Interestingly, an assistant job at Kansas was posted the first week of June. They got two new assistants early in 2018, so this development was very unusual. I applied. Since they were losing a female assistant, however, and it was a male head coach, I knew the prospects weren’t great.

UC Irvine also posted for an assistant coach. The head coach there is a younger female, who interestingly played professional volleyball in Germany and Croatia in cities I’ve actually visited.

Overseas

On May 15th the news hit that the head coach of the Polonia men’s team in London was leaving. I’d had interactions with one of the guys involved in the club before, so I reached out to him. He ended up asking me to send him my CV, which I did. I was not the first choice candidate, however. I heard from one of my contacts in England a couple days later that he’d been offered the job, though at the time he was debating his decision. He did eventually accept.

Actually, that same coach went on to strongly recommend me for the job he vacated at the University of Nottingham. Unfortunately, that was only going to be a part-time position, so it wasn’t going to work for me.

A couple of different contacts mentioned potential opportunities to coach in the German 2nd division. On May 22nd I sent an email to one of them on the women’s side – SV Bad Laer. That’s a small club in western Germany with a strong regional focus. Their 1st team plays in the northern part of the 2nd division. They are looking for a new coach for that team, who will also help with at the lower levels.

Academic

I applied for a post-doctoral position at the University of Warwick in England (not actually in Warwick, but rather in Coventry). My lead PhD supervisor recently moved there from Exeter where I got my degree and told me about it. Coincidentally, my initial lead supervisor moved there after my first year at Exeter. I didn’t make the short list, though.

Interviewing – Lake Erie

As noted above, I was a little late applying. It was to the point that I heard shortly after I did that they were already setting up interviews. So I didn’t expect much. Then I got an email from their HR in the last week of May asking me to submit a reference contact permission form. I thought maybe that was just pro forma, so I was surprised to get a call from the AD early on May 31st. She said the search committee told her they wanted to evaluate me further. Her role at that point was to give me some information about the school and the athletics department there. It basically anticipated a lot of questions that likely would come up. She did not interview me, but rather set up one for me with the search committee the following day.

That interview was perhaps the shortest I’ve ever had – only about 20 minutes. It started with a behavioral question asking me to talk about a time when I had to do something outside my job description. From there they asked me about my thoughts on academics and athletics on a small campus, plus my experience fund raising, managing budgets, handling scholarships, and interacting with trainers. They then gave me a chance to ask my own questions. Finally, the current grad assistant asked me two volleyball-specific questions. The first was my coaching philosophy. The second was to describe a typical practice.

About a week later the A.D. invited me to interview on campus on June 13th. So I went up and met with a whole bunch of staff, including the president. I also met with most, if not all, of the team – with three being included via Face Time. The AD told me there was one more candidate interviewing early the following week. After that they planned to make their decision in short order. Four weeks later the process was still, apparently, on-going. I saw some indications along the way that a couple others were offered the job ahead of me. At least one had turned it down. Rumor was then that they’d decided to interim the job for now and start over after the season. Then rumor indicated a new hire is about to be announced. Either way, I’ve heard nothing despite emailing the A.D. a couple weeks ago.

Interviewing – SV Bad Laer

About a week after I emailed the club I heard back from one of the senior coaches there, and on May 31st we did a Skype call as a kind of preliminary conversation. He answered some questions from me about the club, but only really asked me about my language skills and when I’d been to Germany before in return.

The coach I spoke with told me a conversation would follow with the club’s general manager. He was the one who’d make the decision. That never came to pass, though. On June 21st I received an email saying the club found their new coach. It wasn’t me.

Thinking about possible options

We’re obviously getting very close to the point where college teams in the US will be starting preseason. So that window is rapidly closing. At the same time, I’m not seeing a lot of realistic overseas opportunities. That being the case, I’m giving a lot of thought to what I could do over the next few months ahead of the start of the next college hiring cycle beginning in November/December. That assumes I don’t turn my attentions in another direction, of course.